


what is essential is invisible to the eye

by worry



Category: Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Literary References & Allusions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-11 20:32:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15323739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/worry/pseuds/worry
Summary: Tame me. He sounds delighted, and lonely, and scarred. Barring his lips, nothing else on his face moves as he says it---he does not blink, his eyes stare directly forward. Tame me. Train everything wild out of me, and make me yours.





	what is essential is invisible to the eye

**Author's Note:**

> This is based off Le Petit Prince, the part in which the prince meets the fox and the fox asks the prince to tame it.

 

He meets Turlough on Earth, rotting away in a boys’ school; this is the beginning of the cycle. The Doctor has visited so many planets---some larger than comprehension, some small, as if they are formed by the universe’s index finger and thumb pressed together---yet he always skips directly back to the cycle. 

 

He always goes back to Earth.

 

It is immediately apparent that Turlough doesn’t belong here, and the first indication of that knowledge is the way he touches the TARDIS controls---desperately, that is, hands shaking with what the Doctor can tell is an insatiable hunger. He wants the TARDIS to bend to him, mold with his mind. A normal human would touch it curiously, or perhaps confusedly; Turlough’s attempts to use the TARDIS are rooted in knowledge, and the Doctor can feel Turlough’s loneliness as if it is another body hanging in the room.

 

“Who are you?”

 

Later, Turlough aids him in repairing a device, further proving that he is displaced on the planet. He knows too much. There are humans that can easily understand machinery, of course, but this is alien technology---humanity is centuries away from developing it.

 

As Nyssa says, “And he just  _ walked  _ in?”

 

The Doctor cannot seem to parse his fondness for Turlough, he can only drown in it; the Doctor is trapped underwater and the water is rising, the water is rising, drenching his entire being & filling up his lungs. Imagine the water as Turlough, the lost boy. Imagine the trap as the Doctor’s own mind. Imagine it---a world in which the Doctor can hold his endless thoughts up to the light, candling it to see if there’s life inside.

 

“May I join you?”

 

The Doctor feels a magnetic pull, too strong to withstand. “I think you already have,” he responds; Turlough shakes his hand, but it is more than a handshake. This touch is an agreement--- _ I’ll be here for you. I want you here. You want to be here. Do you ever feel wanted, Turlough? There is something about you that I cannot seem to decipher.  _

 

The Doctor can’t remember the entirety of the conversation, considering Turlough attempted to kill himself sometime after it---an event that rearranged the Doctor, physically and in the depth of his mind, like dusted gears beginning to turn again. Turlough is with him - and then he isn’t.

 

Turlough says, “Tame me.”

 

“Tame me,” Turlough says.

 

He says it in a variety of ways, utilizing one sentence of two words as some kind of sharpened weapon. Tame me. He sounds delighted, and lonely, and scarred. Barring his lips, nothing else on his face moves as he says it---he does not blink, his eyes stare directly forward. Tame me. Train everything wild out of me, and make me yours.

 

Also - he does not say  _ tame me.  _ He says: “I feel safe with you, and I have never felt safe.” He says: “I am fond of you, but I can’t find a way to calm myself.” He says: “I don’t know how to feel things in a balanced way.”

 

The underlying message, the Doctor knows, is always  _ tame me;  _ the Doctor has never been tame himself.  _ Controlled _ , perhaps, restrained, but never tamed.

 

“I want to be better, I think,” Turlough says, “but I can’t control myself. I have to warn you—”

 

“You aren’t as bad as you think you are, Turlough,” the Doctor tells him; the genuine quality of his words seem to turn Turlough stiff again, reinforcing him back into his normal, calculating state.

 

“You’re right,” Turlough responds, and he’s lying. “I apologize.”

 

_ Tame me. _

 

He has never thought of Turlough as wild. Turlough has always been an enigma, a challenge for the mind. Turlough is an unfolding maze with a shifting center. Turlough is water, again, and the Doctor is bending the elements.  _ The Doctor is taming Turlough.  _

 

So the Doctor rests a hand on Turlough’s skin---the tilt of the body where the shoulders and neck become one. Turlough says it out loud, this time: “Doctor, I think you’ve tamed me.”

 

“I know,” the Doctor responds, his syllables gradually rolling quieter, quieter, silent.

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Please tell me what you think, and thanks to Art for the idea!


End file.
